Implications of EU Enlargement for the New Member States' Agri-food Trade

We estimated dynamic panel models for the agri-food trade of six new Member States (the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) with selected countries and trade groupings between 1996 and 2005. In general, we found low income elasticities and high price elasticities of import demand for agricultural commodities. The lagged values for trade are highly significant. We also show that accession to the EU increased the new Member States' exports, but had less impact on their imports. The new Member States have gained significantly from liberalised access to the EU agri-food markets.